The Major Spoilers Tour (Part 1 of 2)

Nerds of Doom!

Every serious collector and reader of comics probably has a nerd room, as my wife calls it, that contains all the treasures you have collected over the years. If you are super lucky, that room is separate from everything else in the house/apartment and you have control over the decor. In honor of Major Spoilers Birthday Week, Matthew and I thought it would be fun to give you a tour of Stately Spoiler Manner.

Today, we’ll kick things off at Major Spoilers HQ.

While it isn’t the official “Hey Kids! Comics!” spinner rack found in most great comic shops, I was able to snag this one off eBay for less than 20 bucks. I use it to house my most recent comics that haven’t been bagged and boarded or filed in ComicBase. Next to that is a poster of the cover to JLA: Classified #1 by Ed McGuinness – I do love me my superhero group shots.

Turning the corner you’ll notice a shelf full of of maquettes and statues of every shape and size. Another shot of that in a moment.

Not all of the statues stay in the box waiting for some future event to unfold, some I proudly display on this piece of crap shelf my wife had around the house that I was able to haul to the office. I don’t know if you can make out all the statues and figures, but I would bet you can’t guess which one is my wife’s favorite. Behind the Wonder Woman statue on the top shelf is a signed sketch from Scott Kurtz of PvP fame that I obtained a few years ago at the San Diego Comic-Con. And yes, that is an authentic Mickey Mouse phone I received while working for Disney way back in the early ’90’s, and yes that is a Michael Turner Wonder Woman poster from Infinite Crisis. That is one of the few MT pieces of art that I really like.

Turning the corner again, we get the prized possession in the nerd research room:

a full sized statue of Batman my wife purchased as a birthday gift a couple years ago. Sad thing is, the first statue that arrived was completely smashed by the delivery people. Fortunately, the dealer had several more and promised to continue to ship a new statue out until it arrived in one piece – luckily, he only had to send one more.

Of course a comfy chair is required when spending long hours in the “research room”, and a leather clad mission style chair is super comfortable. Draped over the chair is a shirt from the ExtraLife Radio Spider-Man III Nerdtacular that Major Spoilers helped sponsor earlier this summer. I’m thinking of having it framed to hang above the chair.

Finally, the cache I’ve been collecting since the early 80’s, all shelved in Drawer Boxes. These things rock, as it saves me from having to tear down the stack should I ever need to get to a comic on the bottom of the pile.

The only bad thing about Drawer Boxes is unless you have them secured somehow; pulling a drawer from the top and having it hang there is a bit of a problem, unless you pile the top with your trades, absolute editions, and what not. The what not in the US Priority box are a bunch of Anime cels and original comic pages I have yet to frame.

Here’s another shot of the shelves of maquettes and statues. If you are scanning the image closely you’ll notice a double item or two (possible giveaways?).

“But Stephen,” you ask, “what about all the writing you do?”

For that dear reader, I have the main office, just down the hall.

With some of my other work, I’ve been able to get an intern from the university I teach at. She didn’t want to work on the Major Spoilers site (go figure), but instead did work last Spring on my Coolness Roundup podcast. While I don’t have an intern now, the space is waiting for the next victim.

This is my workstation. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t just do Major Spoilers, I host a couple podcasts, do video production and editing work, as well as teach video production courses – hence my large and complicated looking setup with multiple computers.

My scanner is on the left, my DV tape deck on the right. On top of the deck is a C3 Batplane, and blocking the view is the baby monitor so I can keep track of my son when working.

Just another shot of the computer systems. I have a laptop when traveling and need to write for this site or SciFi Tech and for teaching, a PC for all the downloads I do, a Mac for editing, and another computer for clients to use while I’m editing their video. (cool mousepad!)

Of course I can still deck out my office with comic items. I fell in love with the X-Men animated style and had to get all the maquettes that were released. There are some other favorites sitting on the shelf as well.

Of course working in silence is no good making an iPod a necessity – check out the cool Batman cover. Are you starting to see a Batman pattern emerge?

And that does it for the grand tour of Major Spoilers HQ. Join us tomorrow, when we take the tour of Major Spoilers East.